Well, as we talk about money, one of the things we said over and over is this isn't something we want from you. This is something we want for you, right? Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, the Alpha and the Omega, the author and the perfecter of your life, but also all of creation does not need your money. But he's doing okay.
This is not a series to try to pass plates after the sermon at the end of the series, particularly, so that you'll give a lot of money. In fact, everybody take a deep breath. We're not passing plates after the sermon is over. We didn't even do that just now.
We said, give a line, give a box is in the back. So it's not what this has been about. And again, if you've missed the heart of the series, go back and watch it online. But this is something God wants to help us with.
As he talks about it, 2000 plus times in Scripture, as Jesus talks about it, 40% of his teachings and his parables. It's something that God and his grace wants to help us with in our lives make money count to leverage it for his kingdom purposes. And again, all of us, we're not always doing super well when it comes to money. It is causing things like divorce.
And maybe that's been your story. It is causing things like stress and mental health, crisis and even suicide over money. So God in his grace, he wants to save us from that and give us a better plan with our money. Give us some tools from his word, with our money.
Because here's the reality. All of us, and some of us are like checking out, we're like, Tim, I don't have a lot of money. Some of us, you have a lot of money and you feel like I'm doing okay with that money. Listen, both of you have to lean in for this because we do not get the option of whether we will use money or not in this life.
It is a tool that we will use. The question is not will we use it? The question is how will we use it? Will it be used for good or for evil because it can be used for both?
Will it be used for impact or insignificant? Because insignificant because it can be used for both. I was looking reminded about like one of the first times I preached on money several years ago and around that time there was the 2017 Milwaukee Marathon. And I don't know if you are a runner or a runner marathon, but if you are, you might have heard about this one specifically.
And it's because the marathon ended 26.2 miles and they realized it was a little bit short. That the course was a little bit short. It was 4,200 feet short, eight tenths of a mile short. Now, I've never run a marathon.
I've run a half marathon. My wife is the beast who's run a full marathon. Like don't mess with her. And so I've seen a little bit of like literally the time, the blood, the sweat, the tears that goes into just completing a marathon and imagine getting to the end of that and being told, hey, you were just a little bit short.
Now, I'd be running back out there on the sidewalk logging that eight tenths of a mile. You know what I'm saying? I'd be getting that marathon to say I ran a marathon. And that's just for the people who completed it.
What about the people who competed in that marathon? You see, there's people in marathon all the time that are competing for the Holy Grail of marathon. The Boston Marathon. And there were people in that marathon doing that that made their time, which if you don't know, it's like a seven minute mile pace for 26.2 miles.
How is that even possible? But man, this is years of sacrifice. Blood, sweat, tears, money. And you know what the Boston Marathon official said?
Hey, good job. That's not enough. It's just a little bit short. It doesn't add up to what you thought.
Now, that would be devastating if you were to be told that about a race. But what if you were told that at the end of the race of life? What if you spent your life with the hustle and the stress and the other side hustle that's not your real hustle? And what if you spent all those hours at work to the collective, your family?
What if you zeroed in on your bank account and checked it five times? A day. And what if you eyed that vacation as a way to impress your peers on Instagram? What if you looked at that car and not just to get around, but to be a status symbol?
And what if you invested your life into money and earthly possessions only to get to the end of your days to be sitting in that hospital bed that I've been sitting next to with a lot of people. And to realize it didn't add up to what I thought. And I'm about to die. And I don't know if you know this.
You've never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse. Like I can't take any of these toys, any of this money with me. And Jesus in his grace wants to save you and I from that. And he wants to have us leverage our money for eternal purposes so that we don't get to the end and think, what did I do all this for?
Okay. So that's Matthew chapter six. That's what we're headed today. Grab a Bible.
Matthew six, 19 through 24. We're going to look at Jesus, this sermon on the mount and he's going to dive into this topic of money. And the question, if you take notes over the top of our time this morning is, does your money have you or do you have your money? Two very different things.
Does your money have you or do you have your money? We're going to see that as we investigate this text this morning. Look at it with me. Matthew six, starting in verse 19, it says this.
Says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body.
So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? No one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve what? Let's read this together. God and money. So we're talking about today what money does to you a couple weeks ago.
I talked about what you do with your money. We talked about being financially free, super practical. That's not this sermon. Today we're going to talk about what money does to you, to your life, to your heart, to your soul.
And the first thing is this, is that money matters to you. That's what money does to you. It matters to you. And if you picture the scene, the historical context of this, Jesus is preaching a sermon.
Right. So you got to picture this a lot of times you read scripture and their letters and this is like the account of it. It's a letter in that form, but it's originally a sermon that if you go back to Matthew, chapter five, it says that Jesus is surrounded by crowds. And he has all these crowds.
And so he goes up on a mountain. He sits down and says he teaches. And we know this as the Sermon on the Mount. It's the best sermon in history.
Right. We got Jesus Christ, not Timmurdle. Jesus Christ preaching a sermon to us. And if he does this, he makes what a good sermon would do.
He builds cases and he develops arguments. And so as you kind of read this, that's what you need to hear. And you go back to read the whole sermon on the mountain, Matthew five, all the way to Matthew seven. What you see is Jesus is building a case for the kingdom.
Not just the way to the kingdom, but the way of the kingdom. How are you and I meant to live if you placed your faith in Jesus as a kingdom citizen? You need to know today we live in America, but that's not our ultimate citizenship. If we know Jesus Christ, amen.
We're kingdom citizens. This world is not my home. Amen. Amen.
Praise God. And Jesus is walking through all these significant topics of how we live as kingdom citizens. How do we handle sex as kingdom citizens? How do we handle our emotional life?
How are we to live? What is our purpose? Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount is to be salt and light. And he talks about all these things in a Matthew chapter six.
He says, here's how you live as a kingdom citizen. You pray and he teaches us the Lord's prayer in Matthew six. Hey, pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, how will be that name?
Like kingdom come that will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He says, you pray like this. And then he starts to talk about fasting. So take time to pray and replace other things in your life with time with God.
And then he almost seems to take a sidebar and talk about money and possessions in this passage. But the reality is it's not a sidebar. See 10 times in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talks about money and possessions.
That is Jesus talks about the way of the kingdom, how you and I are called to live. Jesus, like from the source is preaching the sermon and he says, yeah, prayer is important. Fasting is important. Your spirituality is important.
But so are your finances. And in fact, they're so important that I'm going to preach the best sermon ever in all of history. And I'm going to put money and possessions right smack dab in the middle of it. You see many of us, we hear sermons on money and we think, well, the church just wants my money or or you know, they're going to do weird things.
Like, I don't know if you grew up in church, I went to youth camp in church and they're going to do weird things like, hey, all these CDs. Anybody remember CDs? All these cassette tapes that you're listening to, like I want you to bring them, like I would preach a sermon like this. And then at the end, there's a song and it's an invitation and you would bring your CDs and tapes to the altar and you would lay them down.
So like, limp this, get laid that down, which probably needed to be laid down just to be honest with you in Jesus name. But like, I grew up in church as a kid, it's obviously things like that. When it comes to money, you're like, if you really love Jesus, you'd come down to the altar, just burn your wallet. And that's kind of how we think about the church and God and money.
But you need to know Jesus is not talking about money like it's filth. Jesus is not talking about money like it's trash. Jesus, in fact, is talking about money as treasure. Did you read it with me?
Three times he uses that word treasure, treasure, treasure. He connects your treasure, this very valuable thing to your very heart, your soul. You see, Jesus is actually giving meaning to money. Money matters to God.
That's why he talks about it so much in the Bible. But but ultimately money matters to God because you matter to God. And the way you pivot and the way you are able to navigate this delicate resource of money will be the difference between good and evil in your life. It will be the difference of whether you truly worship God, leverage money for an eternal impact or whether you waste your life.
And God cares about you and it doesn't want you to waste your life. So he talks about it. So listen, God cares about your bank account. God cares about whether you eat or don't eat.
God cares about whether you where you live. God cares about whether you're three kids who are nearing the college age. God cares that they don't go into massive student loan debt, not today Satan. After kids and they're nearing college age.
God cares about my kids going to college. God cares about your savings account, your retirement account. But listen, he wants to give you a correct diagnosis of the value of those things. He says there is value, but I think sometimes we place too much value on those things.
And so Jesus is going to contrast earthly treasure with heavenly treasure, earthly treasure with heavenly treasure. And he's going to say some specific things like money matters. But let's talk about let's assess its true value and we have to read the Bible. I know it's kind of crazy to read the Bible, but you know, just go with me here.
Verse 19, we actually have to read what it says. Jesus doesn't say money doesn't matter. It's Phil. He says verse 19, look at it with me.
I'm going to ask you to read this part with me. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. Massively important phrase. Like what's God talking about?
What's Jesus talking about right here? Don't spend all your time, energy, stress, laying up specific language, storing up, piling up earthly treasures for who? For you. That's what he says.
Now, why would Jesus say that? Does he not want you to be happy? No, he says that because money lies to you. Money lies to you.
That's our second point. What does money do to us? Money matters, but money lies. And that's what we look at Jesus's words.
That's what we see. Remember, this is a sermon by Jesus. He's building this case. He's making this logical argument and he wants to show you the true value of earthly treasures.
They matter, but they don't matter as much as you think they do. Right. And so he shows us in this text and we see we have to know kind of like, well, what's earthly treasure in Jesus's day? What is he really talking about here?
It was primarily three things. It was grain. It was clothing and it was gold. So you can picture the context of Jesus preaching to a bunch of people who got some grain.
They had some clothing and they had some gold and Jesus begins to assess their value. And he says this verse 19, look at the verse. He says, Moss can destroy those things. And you got a picture in their day and this actually translates to our day.
People had clothes that had holes in them because of moths. I don't know if you've ever had holes in your clothes because of moss, my in-laws in their attic. They got clothes and storage stuff in there. They have moth balls to protect their clothes.
By the way, how does that work? I just know they stink. But like, this is a real thing, right? Like, Moss can eat holes in your clothes and Jesus gets at that and gets to the specific value of things like clothes.
He next says, we're rust destroys that over time, people had grain in that day that was spoiled. They had like, we have today, they had metals, they had jewelry, they had tools that rust would get after. And there would be decay. He says, we're thieves, break in and steal.
That would be gold or anything of value that could be stolen. Again, they would have had objects in their house that maybe at one point in time, they didn't have security on their house. They didn't have locks like we do now. They would have been listening to Jesus and they're like, yep.
Yep, Moss can destroy my clothes. Let's say, yeah, grain is spoiled, jewelry got rusted up. And yeah, you know, somebody stole that thing from me last week out of my barn. They could have said that.
They could have pictured that. And to some extent, we can too. Maybe some of you, somebody's broken into your house and stole something, right? But all of us can picture what Proverbs 23 says, which is that money, don't you love the Bible?
Money is like this. It's like an eagle that has wings and it flies away. Right? How many of you got paid on the 15th and you're like, where'd that money go?
Where'd it go? The scripture told you Proverbs 23, it flew away. So maybe your money hasn't literally been stolen, but it feels like it, amen? You're kind of questioning, like, do you ever do that?
Like, Hey, I looked at the bank. I think somebody's robbing us. And you're like, no, I think you just go to Target too much. All right.
When they talk about that, I think you go to Amazon.com. Like, it's just like, they actually, it's real money. People, like you just click the button. It's coming out of your account.
Amazon is not nice. It's like Jeff Bezos, he's wealthy for a reason, people. And you're like, it feels like it just got stolen away. See, here's what Jesus is showing.
He's doing what a great preacher does, the best preacher in all history, by the way. He's showing you real truth that's relevant to your life that you can see objectively. And we see this today, even, you know, we're like, we're like a little bit more advanced, you know, like we got climate cooled storage facilities. We got insurance, right?
We got things like smartphones, right? It's not just a dumb phone. It's a smartphone. You can access anything anywhere, anytime on this phone, but you know what you can also do with this phone, drop it.
Now, I know some of you just like skipped a heartbeat right there. Because this is your treasure. My kids, when I showed them, like it actually is busted up a little bit. I showed them this and it was like, Smeagle with a ring, they're like, Dad, what did you do to your phone?
I dropped it. It's just a screen. So everybody calm down. This is protective screen.
But we have smartphones, but you know what they can shatter. You know what they also do? Like the way Apple works, like as soon as I get the new version of the iPhone, yours mysteriously stops working as well. Anybody knows?
But it's a smartphone, but it decays over time. You look at, we have like the most vast mode of transportation. I mean, we got electric cars now and we got like military looking cars that you can just like plug in and charge up. Like, I mean, it's amazing.
A cyber trucks and always like big Ford F-150. Come on, somebody like gas guzzlers, you're like electric's not from. They have that. They still sell those in 2025.
And like we have all these things are like amazing fast cars, big cars, electric cars, good for the environment cars. We got all these cars, but how many of you know, as soon as you drive that thing off the lot, it appreciates them value by like 25%. And it starts to fade in its value. We have stock markets.
We have like your money can make money while you sit on your couch. How is that even possible? It's amazing. And yet, how many of you know a stock can plummet because of a news conference?
Like how many of you invested in the video stock? That's me. That's what happened. Like a conference call with a CEO and then all said, boom.
Like, so it's true today. You see, my fear for us is we have enough, you know, they had grain clothing gold and how much back in the day. They didn't have locks and security that I'm insurance. So they were listening to this sermon by Jesus.
There's like, yeah, Jesus holds rust. Yep. Destroy thieves. And I think most of us are listening to them like, yeah, Jesus, but I got, I got a security system on my house.
Yeah, I got insurance. So if I break the phone, I get a new one, T mobile, good. Yeah, Jesus, you know, like, I can, I'm going to be okay. I can, I can invest in all these things.
And it's going to, it's going to make it. And Jesus would say that's a lie. Jesus would say that's a lie. And I would say our culture, if you really inspect that, would say that's a lie.
That's why you watch like TMZ. That's why people in Hollywood who have a lot of money, they don't seem to be the happiest or the whole, like whole people in our culture. Do they? But that money.
See, every good lie, you know this, every lie has a partial truth, doesn't it? Like the thing that says money can't buy happiness. Well, yeah, I can. Like if after church, I got to McDonald's and get some French fries, I'm going to be happy for like 15 minutes.
And then I'm going to be incredibly sad. Right. See money, like can give you some happiness. It can give you some security, but not what it promises to give you.
It cannot give you the comfort, peace, achievement, success, status, acceptance that you are hoping to receive. And yet that's what it promises us. And that's what so many people give their lives to. We see this with Solomon, the Old Testament, the wealthiest king who ever lived, he had more money than you.
He had more money than people today. It would have been like a Jeff Bezos kind of guy. And it was very visible because he had gold. He had golden thrones, golden steps.
He had golden cups. He had 1400 chariots, second chronicle says. So it's very visible wealth, more money than anybody in the world. And yet in a sober assessment in Ecclesiastes chapter 5, Solomon, who is at the end of his life, says it this way, he loves money.
Will not be satisfied with money nor he who loves wealth with his income. This is also vanity, which means a puff of smoke. Listen, the Bible preaches this to us, but life preaches this to us. The great theologian from the 1990s, Jim Carrey preaches this to us.
He has this amazing quote. This is not, I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of. So they can see that it's not the answer. Money lies to us, doesn't it?
There's this book, God and Money, who I read a lot to prepare for the series. If you're looking for a resource, it's a great one. It's two Harvard business grads who are just believers and just went after the Bible to see what money God had to say about money. And one of the stories they tell was two people they knew who started out in college.
And one of the guys says, hey, I'm going to retire when I get $2 million. And he was an ambitious guy. So he was working hard. And like in 10 years, he had $2 million.
And they stayed friends. And so his buddy, we heard him say that comes back to him at the end of 10 years. And he's like, hey, you got the $2 million. Now you can retire.
This is amazing. 10 years in. It's amazing. And he said, you know, we were so naive back then.
I mean, $10 million, like $2 million, $2 million is not enough. And so he says, well, what do you think you need? He said, well, I think I need 10 million. And so he works a few more years.
And again, hardworking guy, successful guy comes back like that. His buddy's like, hey, you're up to 10 million. That's incredible. And you're like 20 years into this thing.
So you get to retire, right? And the guy says to him, like, you know, we were so naive back then. You know, I don't know how much is enough, but I know I'm not there yet. See money lies to us.
How is money lying to you? Maybe it's in little ways. Maybe it's in big ways. Jesus wants to speak truth on the midst of your lies in the midst of our culture lives.
And he wants to not just discard money, but he wants to help you leverage money for true and lasting things, for eternal treasure that will not rest, that will not fade, which is by the way, God and the souls of people. That's the only two things that last forever. So how are you investing money in that? How are you leveraging your money for those purposes?
And listen, go out, hustle, work hard, man, get yours so that you can leverage it for God's kingdom purposes that never faked. That's living the dream. That's what God calls us to. So what does money do to us?
Money matters to us. But money lies to us and the money directs things in our lives. Look at verse 21. Jesus connects the heart and money.
And it's actually interesting to look at Jesus's argument here. Again, it's a sermon. He's making an argument. He's building one and he begins to show you the value of your heart, the value of your soul, that each one of you in this room has an eternal soul.
And Jesus is contrasting it earthly and eternal to say you have an eternal heart and soul. So don't aim your money, your resources, your time at temporary things, like just logically again, and this sermon, that's a bad investment. And he starts to show you this connection between the value of your heart and soul and the value of your money and the way that you use it and how those two things work together. And this is where this significant sequence of our heart and treasure really matter.
See, a lot of times again, we don't read our Bibles closely. And so we look at verse 21 and we see things like, we say things like, hey, you know where your heart is? Well, there your treasure is also. It's a week we view it kind of like this.
Like where my heart is like my feelings, my intentions, what's really important to me, that my money will follow after it, that that's what Jesus says in verse 21. And some of you are like, yeah, that's what Jesus says. And I say, no, we got to read our Bible. Let's read this together.
Look at verse 21 with fresh eyes with me. What does it actually say? Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Wait, so how does that work, Tim?
So, so yeah, this is like my kids college funds and nobody's still this afterwards. But like Jesus says, no, this is actually the way it works. Your money goes first. Your treasure leads the way.
Money is not something you merely spend. Money is something that steers your very heart and soul. So when you're going around to target your hearts, follow along with you. When you see like, well, Chip and Joanna Gaines, they have a new like, they have a new set, Tim.
Your heart is following along with that. Listen, here's how it typically works. We think again, it's the opposite, right? We think no, Tim, like Disney theology, like my heart is what really matters.
And God knows my heart and he has a good heart. But how many of you know, husband's, you don't have to raise your hand as I tell the story, but I know I got some some friends out there. How many of you know, like the other day my wife asked me, it was the end of a long day. I was sitting on my couch and I was just getting some rest and we have a lot of things going on at the church, like the building project.
And it's the end of our fiscal year budget cycle. So it's navigating some of those things, navigating just some really hard sin and crisis in the midst of our flock that we shepherd and picking paint colors right after that. And my mind and heart was just all over my body and I was just tired of the day. I just want to sit down on the couch and I look over my sweet wife.
She just says, Hey, can you take out the trash? You know what, you know what I did? I said, in my heart, I feel that I want to do that. I intend, you know what, I intend to take out the trash.
You know what I did? Nothing. I sat on the couch. And you know what I looked over a little bit later and I saw my wife doing husband's, you can relate.
She'd taken out that trash with an attitude. She's like, see this. And I'm like, no, no, I see her. I'm sitting down.
I see her over there. I'm like, no, babe. I wanted to do that. I had the intention.
I had full attention to it. Let me take out that trash. She's like, how many husbands you know is too late now? And I'm like, no, but I hate you to do that.
I wanted, I wanted to do it, but I didn't do it. You see, in those kind of moments, it's not Disney theology. That's real. It's Batman Begins theology.
How many of you seen Batman begins? And Rachel goes to Bruce Wayne in a difficult moment. She says, hey, Bruce, it's not who you are inside that defines you. It's what you do.
You get out there and do something. And that's the reality of this. But it doesn't just work like, well, I have good intentions. It's what I'm driving by the homeless person on the south of the road.
I'm like, oh, how many of you said this? I feel so bad, but I don't have any money. And you're like, oh, I feel so bad. They have their kid with them.
I think it's legitimate. And then you go home and you're like, I feel bad. Like I should probably like go partner with Phoenix Rescue Mission, bring some water bottles to the church because I know we're partnering with them. Like I'm gonna go back to help them.
You ever said that? But not done it because all of a sudden you feel something different, like a hunger for a fridge price or like I'm tired and I want to watch a show. But what happens if you give to Phoenix Rescue Mission? Maybe you give money, but maybe you also give your time.
Some of you have done this. You prepared hope tots like a thousand and we have people that go on street teams and they go out and talk to the people experiencing homelessness. And they like put their money where their mouth is. And those people they care about the people experiencing homelessness in our society and in our city.
It happens personally. You go out and buy that F-150. You're super proud of it. And you're like, I mean, technically you don't own it.
The bank does, but we don't have to get into that. But you put a lot of money into that F-150 and then have you ever, you drove it off the lot and you're driving down the street and right next to you is this little Toyota Prius and they're on their phone and they're like weaving into your lane and you just bought this F-150 with a lot of money. And what starts to happen? You start to go a little mad and you worst thing in like oceans, like in the car like spirulae, nie wah, yo trusses with.
But then you're like, Hey, what are you doing? Stuff looking at your phone. They're like, what just happened? Although it was just money.
Oh, your heart followed your money. And now you're insecure about a little Toyota Prius hitting your truck. Could you put a lot of money there? So now it's got your heart.
I know for me, I bought AirPods when this was a crazy few years ago. I put a lot of money into that, right? And it was like a big deal and we were going to get these AirPods and we had a puppy, golden receiver puppy in that day. And you know what?
He could counter surf. And he thought like AirPods, bone, who cares? I'll just get the AirPods. And I come in and he's chewing up my AirPods.
And I don't know if this is a safe place today, but as your pastor, like I said some things. They're like the biggest signifying mirror in the world. And they come in there like, Dad, why do you so mad at Lincoln? And I explained to them, I'm not mad at Lincoln.
I love my AirPods. It's like speaking with the ring. And he ate my AirPods. What happened?
Your heart follows your treasure. And so Jesus is saying, so where are you putting your treasure? Are you putting on earthly things? Because your heart's going to go after those things.
And that's our last point is that money reveals, look at verse 22. He says the eye is a lamp to the body that you can kind of picture again. It's a great preacher Jesus. You can picture that illustration.
But the eye is shining a light into the very depths of your soul. And that what you look at, what you chase after with money and possessions, like that doesn't just direct your heart. It reveals your heart that you want to know what somebody values. You don't need to know what they pray about.
You don't even know what they talk about. You need to look at their bank account. And that will show a thread that will go all the way to a little throne in your heart. Hey, where do you spend your money?
How do you plan it out? What does your bank account show? And that goes all the way, it threads all the way to this throne. And that Jesus is causing all of us to ask this question, Hey, what's sitting on that throne in my heart?
It's God. And it's like people and my kids and life change and like people getting baptized him and they kind of eternal things. Is it? How do you know?
I'm going to give you a few things just briefly. The first thing you do is write it out. I don't know, my wife and I did this. It was humbling.
It was sobering. Because we did this early on in our marriage and we just thought, Hey, we're generous people. I mean, we have great hearts like we love people and we love God. And then we write out how we spend our finances and it showed we love the chicken sandwich.
They take fillet a lot. And we're like, Oh, no, we love the church and the kingdom outposts. We're a part of and we're like, we kind of forgot to write the check. But we'll get around to that.
And it just revealed to us like, Oh my gosh, like we're not living like where our treasure is and in their heart. We also we're not doing that as Jesus called us. They just got to flip things around. But it happened because we wrote it out.
So we need to write your finances out, listen to financial peace, university, take the class. We hosted here at times, listen to a podcast called money guys, gets some help plan out your money. You plan out everything else in life. And we think our money will just stumble into investments that last for the kingdom.
It doesn't work that way. You have to be intentional. AC is like gift to the building fund, help this kingdom out. You're like, yeah, yeah, I think that would be great.
I think people will get baptized in that room. I think marriages will get healed on this campus. I think next generation is going to be raised up and deployed as missionaries and pastors went like, I like that, Tim. Have you given?
Well, I mean, no. And what Jesus is saying is it's hard truth is that I what you fix your, your eye on what you gaze upon, how you spend your money. That's actually the most accurate light to what's truly in your soul. And then he ends it was saying that you can't serve God in money.
That he calls money a master and that God is supposed to be your master. And you can't grab fully a hold of God and keep fully a hold of money. As long as I've read this passage, I've read it a lot. I've always thought, okay, Jesus is preaching a sermon.
I'm a preacher. I would have said in that moment, like you can't serve God in Satan. Because we usually pit those two things against each other, don't we? Like God, Satan, they're kind of rivals, right?
But in heads, why didn't you say that? Jesus, that's what I would have said. And it's because I don't know if you have, I've never met anyone who's like, Tim, I'm really struggling right now with what? We're shipping the devil, you know, the one with the red pitchfork and this real scary one, most of the people I meet are like, I don't have bad dreams about that.
I want to get away from that. And that's not tempting. But you know what it is, tempting shiny money, security, bragging rights to your peers. That, your soul, they can go after that.
You can go get some of that. You can work 70 to 80 hours to the neglect of your family to go get that. And so Jesus says, yeah, I know you and he knows me. So you can't serve.
You can't have to master. You can't have God and money. The money is uniquely powerful to capture someone's soul. So Jesus and his grace wants to save you from that.
Listen, as a pastor, I've had a lot of hard meetings with people. I've had a lot of hard meetings with people who are later in life. I've been by hospital beds and I've never, ever had somebody come to me and say, you know, you know what, Tim? Like my marriage is healthy.
And as I sit here like at the end of my life, like, I love my wife. She loves me. We're not perfect. Man, it's been amazing.
You know, I have this great relationship with my kids and I've invested into them and like, like I've really discipled them. And it's been amazing joy and privilege to do that. But you know what, I drove a Mazda and it's just ripping me apart at the end of my life. I don't know what to do about it.
It's never happened. You know, I've heard a lot of stories. Hey, you know, I had the right car. I had that amazing job.
I worked a lot. I got a lot of stuff done and people knew my name and they knew my title and my position in friends of ours, like our peers. Like keeping up with the Joneses. Like I was the Joneses.
And when we would post stuff on Instagram, a lot of people would hit that like button. And I just knew like with my car and my vacations and my kids, like college, they went through like people were pretty impressed with me. And yet my wife doesn't talk to me. My kids are estranged and they don't know Jesus.
And I've seen a lot of people shed tears over that. So Jesus in his grace and his truth is trying to call you to something greater. You see that Milwaukee marathon? You know what they did at the end of the race, specifically for the Boston Marathon qualifiers.
You know what they did? It's so nice. They went to them and said, Hey, I know this is hard, but you can recover and you can race again. 26.2 miles, seven minute mile pace.
You can just do it again. Listen, at least they had another shot that at the end of your life, you won't get that opportunity. You get one life. How are you going to use it?
How are you going to suspended for eternal God given purposes and impact? How are we going to do that as a church? God, I pray that that would be true of us this morning. I pray that each person in here would be giving their lives away, leveraging our money, working hard, saving so that we can make an eternal impact.
That's where the joy is. That's where the meaning is. God, you have set it up this way. You have designed it this way.
And if we've continued to hoard for ourselves and chase the American dream and just chase status and success with our money, we will be left wanting. You got to pray that you'd wake us up to see that. And we would make intentional decisions to invest into heavenly eternal treasure for your fame, for your glory and for the good of those around us, for our joy. God, thank you that you're so good to us, that you want to give yourself to us.
We just have to take hold of you. And to do that, we have to let go of some other things. Help us to do that now as we respond. I pray that the mighty name of Jesus, everybody said amen.